Many techniques exist for the production of nanoparticles including techniques set forth in “Recent Advances in the Liquid-Phase Syntheses of Inorganic Nanoparticles” written by Brian L. Cushing, Vladimire L. Kolesnichenko and Charles J. O'Connor; and published in Chemical Reviews, volume 104, pages 3893-3946 in 2004 by the American Chemical Society; the subject matter of which is herein expressly incorporated by reference.
Further, the article “Chemistry and Properties of Nanocrystals of Different Shapes” written by Clemens Burda, Xiaobo Chen, Radha Narayanan and Mostafa A. El-Sayed; and published in Chemical Reviews, volume 105, pages 1025-1102 in 2005 by the American Chemical Society; discloses additional processing techniques, the subject matter of which is herein expressly incorporated by reference.
The article “Shape Control of Silver Nanoparticles” written by Benjamin Wiley, Yugang Sun, Brian Mayers and Younan Xia; and published in Chemistry—A European Journal, volume 11, pages 454-463 in 2005 by Wiley-VCH; discloses additional important subject matter, the subject matter of which is herein expressly incorporated by reference.
Still further, U.S. Pat. No. 7,033,415, issued on Apr. 25, 2006 to Mirkin et al., entitled Methods of Controlling Nanoparticle Growth; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,135,055, issued on Nov. 14, 2006, to Mirkin et al., entitled Non-Alloying Core Shell Nanoparticles; both disclose additional techniques for the growth of nanoparticles; the subject matter of both are herein expressly incorporated by reference.
Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 7,135,054, which issued on Nov. 14, 2006 to Jin et al., and entitled Nanoprisms and Method of Making Them; is also herein expressly incorporated by reference.
The present application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/144,928, which was filed on Jan. 15, 2009, the subject matter of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference.
Similarly, WIPO Publication No., WO/2009/009143, entitled, “Continuous Methods for Treating Liquids and Manufacturing Certain Constituents (e.g., Nanoparticles) in Liquids, Apparatuses and Nanoparticles and Nanoparticle/Liquid Solution(s) Resulting Therefrom”, which published on Jan. 15, 2009, discloses a variety of methods related to some of the materials disclosed herein. The subject matter of that application is herein expressly incorporated by reference.
The present invention has been developed to overcome a variety of deficiencies/inefficiencies present in known processing techniques and to achieve a new and controllable process for making nanoparticles of a variety of shapes and sizes and/or new nanoparticle/liquid materials not before achievable.